2,000 evacuated in scare at main Paris airport

Eight flights canceled, 20 delayed after person walks into ‘restricted area’ without undergoing security check

By AFP 2 July 2017, 12:14 am Edit

French soldiers patrol at Charles de Gaulle airport, outside of Paris, Friday, May 20, 2016. (AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani)

At least 2,000 people were evacuated from Paris’s main airport on Saturday and eight flights canceled after an individual went into a “restricted area” without going through security controls, airport sources said.

“We had to evacuate to ‘decontaminate’ the zone, meaning check to make sure no object had been left,” said one of tuhe sources.

The evacuations were from a zone in terminal 2F at the Charles de Gaulle airport that passengers access after passing through security and before boarding, a second source said.

“Police searched the terminal from top to bottom and found no suspicious object,” the source added.

The incident also led to about 20 flights being delayed.

Charles de Gaulle airport is Europe’s second-biggest airport, with some 180,000 passengers transiting through one of its eight terminals each day.

France remains under a state of emergency after a wave of jihadist assaults in the past 18 months which have left more than 230 people dead since 2015.